Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 What is loyalty?
- Chapter 2 Friendship and belief
- Chapter 3 What is patriotism?
- Chapter 4 Against patriotism
- Chapter 5 Filial duty: debt, gratitude and friendship
- Chapter 6 Filial duty: special goods and compulsory loyalty
- Chapter 7 Is loyalty a value? Is loyalty a virtue?
- Chapter 8 Communitarian arguments for the importance of loyalty
- Chapter 9 Josiah Royce and the ethics of loyalty
- Chapter 10 Disloyalty
- Conclusion
- Postscript: universal morality and the problem of loyalty
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 7 - Is loyalty a value? Is loyalty a virtue?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter 1 What is loyalty?
- Chapter 2 Friendship and belief
- Chapter 3 What is patriotism?
- Chapter 4 Against patriotism
- Chapter 5 Filial duty: debt, gratitude and friendship
- Chapter 6 Filial duty: special goods and compulsory loyalty
- Chapter 7 Is loyalty a value? Is loyalty a virtue?
- Chapter 8 Communitarian arguments for the importance of loyalty
- Chapter 9 Josiah Royce and the ethics of loyalty
- Chapter 10 Disloyalty
- Conclusion
- Postscript: universal morality and the problem of loyalty
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE STORY SO FAR
So far, I have been looking at kinds of loyalty: friendship, patriotism and filial loyalty. Yet, when people talk about the ethical significance of loyalty, they often mean to speak not of loyalty of some particular kind, but of loyalty in general. In describing someone's character, for example, you might say that she is loyal. People sometimes speak of loyalty as a value or a guiding principle. Some philosophers are advocates of the “ethics of loyalty,” believing that loyalty should be the foundational concept for ethical theory. The focus in all these cases is on loyalty itself, or on what different forms of loyalty have in common, not what sets them apart.
The next three chapters consider some questions about the ethical importance of loyalty, taken as a general proposition. This chapter begins by drawing some generalizations from claims made earlier in the book. Then, I will argue in turn that loyalty is not a value (in a sense to be specified), and that loyalty is not a virtue. In making my case for these claims, I will ignore some well-known arguments, associated with the communitarian program in moral and political philosophy, according to which loyalty is a central value or virtue; those arguments will be considered in Chapter 8. Chapter 9 looks at the prospects of the ethics of loyalty.
Sometimes, loyalty is obligatory; I said in Chapter 6 that there appears to be a duty to be loyal to parents, for example.
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- Information
- The Limits of Loyalty , pp. 144 - 161Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007